Necessary Detour (34 page)

They wouldn’t take her out the front door. Where’d they go?

Grabbing the first person he saw, Pete tried to speak but his mouth wouldn’t work. He leaned against the older woman and together they stumbled against the wall. Still upright, blackness swept in front of his eyes. “Get security. Goldy is being abducted by Dwayne,” he tried to say, but his words were unrecognizable and his voice was barely audible with the damned vocal nodes blocking his volume. “Get security. Goldy.”

“Help.” The woman’s feeble voice called as she shrugged Pete off to the floor.

****

When Pete regained consciousness, he was lying on a gurney in a busy corridor of the hospital. His vision was blurred and his head felt like it had cracked wide open to expose brain matter. Even thinking hurt. How long had he been out?

Nikki!

“Goldy was abducted!” he whispered to the next person who walked by.

The nurse turned around, startled. “It’s okay. Lie down. The police are here.”

He tried to sit up, but his head felt stabbed with knives. “Goldy?”

The nurse tried to reassure him. “I’ll get someone to talk to you.”

“Did they find Goldy?”

“I’m not sure.” The woman looked down the hall to the next set of doors.

He sat up. The pain split his head. “I gotta go.”

Just then, another young nurse came through the doors and ran toward them. “You’ll never believe what’s going on out there.” She nodded down the hall. “Someone kidnapped Goldy, and the police took off after them.”

The first one glanced at Pete and back. “Shhhh. He was part of it,” she whispered.

“I’m a US Marshal and I’m ordering you to get the police for me,” Pete said, in spite of excruciating pain.

Hitchens walked through the doors and a look of concern crossed his face when he saw Pete. “There you are.”

“Goldy okay?”

“She is. It was a chase but they got her. She was drugged, like you. She’s on her way back in an ambulance.” Someone spoke from beyond the door. “ETA, two minutes. Vitals are normal.”

“You can’t stay out of trouble, can you, Daniels?” Hitchens said.

Pete tried to ease his body off the gurney. “Listen to me. I think someone else was in on it. A woman, in Goldy’s hospital room. She stuck me with a needle.”

Hitchens’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I don’t think she left with them. Caucasian, middle-aged with brown hair, glasses, dressed in black. She was in the room.”

Hitchens radioed the information. “Any sign of her?”

“Negative. Besides Goldy, only two males were in the van. Both Caucasian.”

Pete launched himself off the gurney and stumbled to the elevator. “602,” Pete managed to whisper as the blackness overtook him again.

****

Nikki woke with a colossal headache with Elvis asleep beside her legs. She looked around the room. Papers littered the floor and the computer keyboard hung off the desk by a cord. Where was Merilee? Last thing she remembered, they were waiting to make their escape to the house. A nurse now occupied the chair where Quinn had slept. Two police officers entered the room and crossed to Merilee’s desk, rifling through the papers.

“Hey.” Nikki knew Merilee was very private about her stuff.

The nurse jumped up and glanced at the monitors beside the bed. “You’ve had quite a night,” she smiled.

“Big headache.” Nikki’s mouth was like the Atacama Desert. “What happened?” The escape to her new house must have been postponed. But why didn’t she remember?

A policewoman standing at Merilee’s desk spoke into a radio. “Goldy is awake. Roger that.” She crossed the room to stand at the end of the bed. Elvis didn’t stir. “Good morning, ma’am,” she said. “Do you remember being drugged?”

Nikki refrained from shaking her throbbing head. “No.”

“You were given a non-prescribed sedative last night, loaded in a van, and taken from this hospital. We believe it was against your will.”

“Merilee and I were going to the new house.” Nikki tried to remember.

“Quinn was drugged as well. She’s fine and on her way to see you.”

“Oh, my God.” Nikki leaned forward to feel the warmth of her dog’s body.

“Drugged and still sleeping it off. If you feel up to it, we’d like to ask you some questions about Dwayne Capleoni and the woman you called Merilee.”

****

Nikki’s assistant had double-crossed her in the worst way imaginable. Merilee was behind the Shakespeare conspiracy and orchestrated the abduction attempt with Dwayne Capleoni and a guy named Mike. And now she was on the loose. This shocking revelation left Nikki confused about why Merilee would betray her this way. And if it was true. For what reason? She hadn’t been safe on tour or any time she’d been with Merilee or Dwayne. And how safe had Quinn been around Dwayne?

According to Gateman, the night before, a police officer noticed something suspicious, came in the hospital room, saw everyone asleep and got stuck with a needle. Merilee probably intended the drug for herself, to hide her involvement while a ransom was decided. Instead, she’d been seen and had to escape.

So far, the FBI team was still searching for Merilee. Her apartment in L.A. had been ransacked with no evidence of intention, but at Dwayne’s place they found enough to prove that both he and Merilee conspired to abduct their boss. And that Merilee was Shakespeare.

Last night, Ted Gateman had conducted the interrogation of the two men, Dwayne and the older one, Mike, who refused to talk, so far. Luckily Mike’s cell phone had enough information on it for the FBI to piece together the plan.

An apartment had been rented an hour away. There, Goldy would wait out the time it took for ten million to clear a bank in the Cayman Islands. Merilee was to remain behind on the Goldy side, innocently aiding the negotiation. Nothing suggested that any form of torture would be connected to the abduction and when Mike was finally convinced to talk, he assured them that the Shakespeare letters were only to break down Nikki’s confidence. “We never woulda done anything said in those letters. Never. She just wanted to make Goldy miserable.”

Gateman looked sympathetic to Nikki’s shock.

“This is like a bad dream.” Nikki felt nauseous. “I trusted Merilee with my life for over a year. The letters were so venomous, so sick.” It was incomprehensible how Merilee could write those things. She’d lived alongside Nikki’s fear on tour. “And for what? Money? No one writes that they’re going to inject cleaning fluid into the veins of their victim and stand by to watch them squirm, if they don’t have a more serious motive than money.” Gateman agreed and assured her they were working on it.

Dwayne claimed he was innocent, despite the evidence against him. Gateman was confident that they’d catch Merilee. And when they did, the motive would surface.

For health and safety reasons, Nikki was kept at the hospital for a few more days. Quinn recovered quickly and was more horrified that her clean record of drug use was now blemished. Thank God Merilee had chosen a sedative that hadn’t hurt the baby. Nikki still wanted to believe that had been intentional.

On the morning of the third day, Nikki got the call she’d been expecting from Gateman.

“We have the suspect in custody.”

“Where was she?” It was hard for Nikki to think of Mer as a criminal. That fact had not sunk in.

“SeaTac Airport. Wearing a disguise,” Gateman said. “On her way to Anchorage, Alaska. Her biggest mistake was trying to leave town so soon.”

“Is she remorseful?” Nikki’s voice cracked.

“Only that she got caught.”

Nikki requested a private conversation with Merilee before the suspect was taken back to Los Angeles. While waiting for the FBI’s prisoner to arrive, she reread the letters from Shakespeare and reassured herself that Merilee was some kind of a monster to torment her like this. And with two accomplices. “Why can’t I place this Mike guy? I know I’ve seen him before.

“Mom, they’re crazy. Stop trying to have it make sense.” Quinn had barely left her mother’s side in days.

Dressed and ready to be discharged, she sat in her hospital room waiting for Gateman to arrive with Merilee. When the door finally opened and two guards escorted the handcuffed woman into the hospital room, Nikki motioned for her to sit down across from her.

The two women stared hard at each other, the FBI agents on either side of the prisoner. Quinn and Gateman waited in the hall, undoubtedly wringing their hands.

“Merilee…” Nikki’s voice was heavy with sorrow.

The woman looked down, into her wrinkly T-shirt.

“I don’t know why,” Nikki whispered.

Empty silence. A gull flew by the window. A siren increased in volume and stopped somewhere below the window. Finally the prisoner spoke. “You know why.” The sound coming from the woman fifteen feet away was devoid of any remorse. This voice was new for Merilee and Nikki reminded herself there was no such person as Merilee.

“Do I?” Nikki leaned forward to try to make eye contact. “We were more than boss and assistant, Mer. We were friends.” She paused, but the woman across from her didn’t move. “Was it money? Did you need money? I would’ve helped.”

Merilee’s head snapped up, and the sparks in her eyes made Nikki lean back.

The FBI agents glanced down at their prisoner.

“I don’t care about the money,” she spat.

“What then? What do you care about?”

The woman hung her head, her lips tight, her face pained.

“Tell me what I ever did to you, Mer.” Nikki would wait as long as she needed.

Finally Merilee took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “You killed my daughter.” Her voice was a low growl.

Nikki’s breath caught in her throat. “Who was your daughter?”

“You ignored her.”

Then she knew. Yellow. The runaway who’d killed herself.

“She idolized you.” The woman’s squinty stare was frightening.

“You were her mother?” What was Yellow’s real name? Nikki searched for the name. “Kenzie.” Nikki covered her mouth with her hand, holding in a sob.

Merilee’s head jerked up at the sound of the name.

“Oh, my God. You are that poor girl’s...” Years ago, Nikki had written the parents a letter to tell them how sorry she was for their loss. “I felt terrible about what happened.”

“You didn’t help her. You made a fool out of her. She loved you.” A noise escaped the woman’s mouth, like a cough mixed with a sob.

“She didn’t come to me for help.”

“She was screaming for help in everything she did.” The woman’s yell brought the agents closer, at the ready.

Nikki motioned for them to wait. “Merilee, you have spent a year on the road with me. You know what it’s like. Fans come in all degrees. I honestly did not know how serious it was with Kenzie. I had no idea she would try to kill herself.”

“She loved you. My daughter left home to be a rock star, to follow you. And you ignored her.” Her eyes flashed with hatred. “And you treated her like dirt.”

“I didn’t know her to treat her like anything.” What more could Nikki say? She’d been afraid of the girl. Searching the mother’s anguished face, Nikki saw no similarities to the hard features of the fan who’d chosen to die at the Goldy concert. “Is your name Sharon?”

Merilee’s weeping turned to sobs. “You wrote that terrible song about her. Like she was some evil person.”

“I didn’t realize she was so young, so needy. Your daughter’s state of mind scared me. I asked to help her one night, but she ran away. When she put the pipe bomb under the bus, I worried she’d hurt me or any one of us. She threatened to kill Quinn.” Nikki waited, took a breath and sat forward. “Your daughter was dangerous.” She couldn’t reason with this woman. She was a grieving mother. A grieving, crazy mother. “What you’ve done is wrong. Making my life miserable over these Shakespeare letters was not fair. And carrying on for so long…” She searched the woman’s face for remorse.

She whispered. “Yeah, well, I forced you to retire, didn’t I? And now you can never do this to another girl.” Merilee looked smug. “Forcing you out was my goal. The money was just a bonus.”

“But you didn’t. Pregnancy gave me the opportunity to retire, so don’t fool yourself.” Nikki’s expression was rock hard. “Drugging me” —Nikki touched her tummy— “and your whole plan to hold me for money was so much worse than me ignoring a runaway girl who obviously had family problems or she wouldn’t have followed me and then killed herself over
my
lack of attention.” Nikki sat back and took a deep breath. “I hope you get good psychiatric counseling now. Writing those letters and manipulating my life was the work of a sick mind.” She looked up at the FBI agents. “We’re done here.” Nikki stood and walked to the window, as they led the woman out of the room.

Gateman entered and stood behind the chair that had been vacated by Merilee. “Did she tell you who she is?”

Nikki nodded. “Kenzie’s mother.”

“We thought we’d cleared her a year ago when this all started, but she covered her tracks remarkably well. She’s an educated woman, a former teacher of English literature.” He ran a hand through his dark hair. “Did she tell you about Dwayne?”

Nikki shook her head.

“She pulled him into this knowing he owed the wrong guys money in Los Angeles.” He waited while Nikki assimilated the information. “Dwayne is two steps away from having his face messed up over debt, and he feared for his children who he’s losing in a custody battle with his ex-wife. Mike, the older guy, is Kenzie’s grandfather, Sharon ‘Merilee’s’ father.”

Nikki nodded but it didn’t matter. They were terrible people for what they’d plotted and planned. She’d have to testify against them all eventually. Thinking of that reminded Nikki that she hadn’t heard how Connie’s trial ended. “Thanks for all the good work, Ted. It’s over.”